In Praise of Bookstores

I was out wandering around my new neighborhood, Vancouver, the other day and ran across the most awesome bookstore. Now – every city I have lived in (which seems to be quite a few now) has always had some kind of legendary bookstore. I have to admit that when I travel to a new city for some reason or another, I always look up what bookstores they have. But I am new to Vancouver and didn’t know they had a store that for science fiction fans is up there in the top ten lists.

It is called White Dwarf Books and for a small store it has a ton of great books. It actually has both fantasy and science fiction, and in enough depth that I had a hard time stumping the owners on books I wanted to find. I love getting stuff over the net on my kindle and all, and I would be hard pressed to review without it. But nothing really takes the place of walking into a real old fashion bookstore.

It made me realize that with the struggles that many bookstores have these days (I am amazed that White Dwarf has been around for 30 years!) publishers must be finding it harder and harder to find ways to let the readers know about a new book as it comes out. True – we book bloggers like to think we do our share, and we do, to keep readers abreast of the latest and greatest of the genres we cover. But like so many other avid readers, I always walk out of a bookstore with so many more books than I intended to get. That is because browsing is part of the experience of a bookstore, along with the experience of discovering a totally new author or title.

So perhaps from time to time I will see if I can’t do the equivalent of browsing in a bookstore here and see if I can’t introduce you to some writers or books you may not be familiar with. It is easy to just write about the top sellers and what everyone else is talking about on the web. For starters- here are a few I stumbled on that are not in the top ten list, but are books that belong on everyone’s reading list:

The Hermatica of Elysium by Annmarie Banks is an amazing story set in the time of the Inquisition in Barcelona. Yes, there is magic in it, as you will find out with a bang in the story. But more than that, there is a writing flare here that is rare in many of today’s fantasy stories. Just try reading the first few pages in the Amazon listing…you will want more. A feisty heroine whose power is knowledge, in more ways than one, this is one book worth checking out. And guess what- she is right now working on the sequel! How lucky can we be!

The Demi-Mode: Winter by Rod Rees is a story within a story. You begin at a furious pace getting caught up in the survival of our heroine. But no sooner do you feel yourself engrossed in her fate then you are flung into the “real world” and realize that what you were following was one that existed only in a computer. Welcome to a new version of cyberpunk – where lives and relationships take place at multiple levels and in many worlds. It could be confusing in another’s hands, but I found that Demi-Mode was the kind of world you want to immerse yourself into and soon it becomes second nature to breathe this unnatural air that Rees creates. If you like your SF/Fantasy a bit on the adventurous side, this may be a great place to look.

That’s my little bit of sharing for this blog. I just may take a trip down the stacks again soon and see what little tid-bits I run across to share.